PaulPavlinovich's post
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Connect Moderator

Improving local Street View

Lately I've been undertaking a Local Guides activity that doesn't earn points. Yes I know its strange to not be taking part in the endless quest for points. I've been finding roads in my area without Street View and resolving that problem. These have ranged from roads in the Dandenong Ranges where I live such as 

Uren Road, Emerald

 

 

Some people react to the camera sticking out of the car roof in surprise

 

 

In total I've contributed Street View Blue Lines for 54 streets, parks and walking tracks near me.

 

This is good fun and a new way to contribute that can really affect your local neighbourhood. Thanks to the Street View and Local Guides teams for supplying the Connect Live attendees with Theta V cameras. We're now you're testers and ambassadors. I've already had one person I know locally comment that they've seen my name and car on Street View and that it was really cool that their visitors will have an easier time finding their place because now they can send them a link on Maps which has a picture to go with the place.

 

Regards Paul

Emerald VIC, Australia
16 comments
Connect Moderator

Re: Improving local Street View

Fantastic @PaulPavlinovich

I have been doing the same experiments but mostly on foot. 

 

I finally managed to hide myself completely from the bottom part of photospheres and I will soon post a tutorial on how to go about doing it .

 

BTW, your street view turns out to be more clean and vivid, mine ends up all blurry and with lot of chromatic aberrations , any suggestions to treat that?

 

Cheers

Connect Moderator

Re: Improving local Street View

Are you running both the latest firmware on the Theta V 2.50.1 ? That along with the latest Street View App has good results @OmerAli. Also aim for even light - I've had good results on cloudy days. That avoids bright and dark spots. I've found with the car that I need to stay at or below 40km/h but you won't have that worry on foot :).

Connect Moderator

Re: Improving local Street View

Thanks @PaulPavlinovich

I got the latest firmware, I guess it must be the lighting as I only record when it's not raining here in Malaysia and then it gets very sunny. 

Perhaps the camera software gets fuzzy when it has to calibrate sunny brights and shady greys

Level 9

Re: Improving local Street View

wow  @PaulPavlinovich nice information about local street view most useful for us, Thank you for sharing with us.  

Level 10

Re: Improving local Street View

Fantastic job @PaulPavlinovich! Actually I'm out of blue lines world, despite the fact that I was one of the first to experience the conversion from blue dots to blue lines.

Actually I can't buy another 360 camera, so I will wait some time, meanwhile I will enjoy the blue lines created all around the world by you great summiters with Theta V!

 

Connect Moderator

Re: Improving local Street View

This sounds silly, but are the lenses on your camera clear @OmerAli? You're in a very high humidity environment in Malaysia. When its humid, one thing that plagues photographers (and people wearing glasses) when you transition from a dry cool air conditioned place to outside the camera can fog internally. Normally this will go away after the camera body and lens warm up. The Theta V isn't sealed so I wouldn't be surprised if this happens to it. Look into the lenses on both sides before you start to make sure they're clear of fog/water.

 

The camera also exposes both sensors the same, so if it is very sunny on one side and shadow on the other then the camera will average this exposure and set both sides. One side will end up too bright and will wash out to some extent. The other side will be too dark and will show all sorts of noise.

Connect Moderator

Re: Improving local Street View

Thanks @NirmalTeja it is nice to positively impact your own neighbourhood. There are lots of little roads around here in the mountains that the Street View car hasn't bothered with. But those roads do have businesses and homes on them. Plenty of those small rural businesses aren't even on Maps so the next step is to follow the Street View and add them.

Level 8

Re: Improving local Street View

@PaulPavlinovich I think this will be a great asset to visitors to the area. They look like what we call, back roads, country roads. Here they can be dangerous if you are not used to them, with blind spots at bends and no or bad lighting. People driving the back roads in the countryside are used to them but people who are used to driving in the city and on motorways, these country roads can be scary especially in the dark of night. I think your street views will make your region more accessible. So  Good  job .

Connect Moderator

Re: Improving local Street View

You can still create blue lines with your Theta S @LucioV it will still join up individual panoramas if they are 8m or less apart. Most of the time it does this by itself. The video feature of the Theta V is much easier from this aspect and its tie into the Street View App is very convenient.

 

The only downside I've encountered so far is there isn't enough memory in the Theta to map for a whole day (waiting for each to download to the phone means too much downtime). I've been looking at hack sites. The Theta has a micro SD card inside it that can be replaced with a bigger one if you're game to break open the glued camera shell. You can also use an OTG adapter to transfer the files from the camera to a memory card, but I think this would just get boring because transferring gigs of files to USB is pretty slow (a bit faster than wireless) and you have to transfer them to the phone for the Street View App to pick them up which isn't all that reliable under Android 9.